everybody likes. Some of the wagtails stay with us all the year round, but most move southward as winter approaches, and when the weather becomes severe, cross the Channel to seek a warmer climate. In Spring they are one of the ploughman's companions, for often it is only in the freshly-turned furrows that they can then find the insect food they need, but later on they seek the neighbourhood of water where winged things assemble, and there love to paddle in the shallows. Often, too, they take flights inland, searching the meadows and garden-lawns for "such small deer" as they live upon, hawking for flies among the haycocks or amongst the cattle that are standing at ease by the pond, or following them in quest of the insects which, as they graze, they disturb from the herbage. I know no bird that is more "bird-like" than the wagtail; more dainty, delicate, and elegant: in its every movement it is airy, the embodiment of buoyant grace: whether on the ground or a-wing it is fairy-like, volatile, and wayward: running, fluttering, and flitting impulsively as if it were too happy to stop to think, like a child in a meadow full of flowers: a sylph among the birds, so slim and so sweetly-proportioned as to make its little companions look burly and thick-set: so prettily timid in its demeanour that the rest seem almost aggressive; in a word, a bird of birds. But between the familiar and unfamiliar there are just enough birds, well known to all of us, that fit the seasons and the months with a rather special appropriateness. For the months there is the fieldfare for January, the rook for February, the thrush for March, the swallow for April, the nightingale for May, the dove for June, the kingfisher for July, the grouse for August, the partridge for September, the pheasant for October, the woodcock for November, and "the wren, the wren, the king o' the birds," for December. "_A Winter such as when birds die_ _In the deep forests._" SHELLEY. "_Now various birds in melting concert sing,_ _And hail the beauty of the opening Spring._" SAVAGE.